Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Dove Fighting at the Duomo di Milano

Today there is a shot of myself. Normally I am quite comfortable not being in front of the lens but I thought I have to show you this amazing photo. When I travel I use to do this ridiculous thing. I jump in front of every cool sight I visit. This looks quite stupid but it is a nice remembrance for the location. I will show it to my grand kids when I am old…

So this is me at the Duomo die Milano in Europe's fashion capital. You can see I tried to dress adequate :).

The cool thing is that there are pigeons all over the place. Just like in Venice… You can see them pretty clear on the photo. If you move quickly they all try to fly away and make a lot of noise.

So here I jump in front of the dome and a good friend of mine was so nice to shoot.

…

Recently I get a lot of emails on the topic “how do you get all your views, your favourites and comments.” Well I want to share it here because time allows me not to answer every email instantly.

My personal 10 Rules to get attention on Flickr:

1.If you want people to interact on your stream, interact on theirs. Tell them your honest opinion, be a reliable contact.

2.Don’t advertise on other peoples streams. Too bad I did this in the beginning of my Flickr time. I am really sorry for every advertisement I did on somebody's stream. People will hate you, block you and sent you some harsh messages.

3.Try to post good, interesting and unique material. Don’t try to copy this person or that person. Find your own style and present it in a nice way. Also write something to your images like feelings you had when you took it or a song that comes to your mind when you look at the photo. Be creative! Because that’s what Flickr is about!

4.Don’t try hard to be successful or something like this. Believe me you are not! Not even if you have 10 million views. For the big guys like for example Trey Redcliff or The White house this is just peanuts. Better try to have fun with photography because if you have fun the rest will come on its own.

5.Try out some groups in the beginning. Even though all these blinking group badges are annoying it helps you to get some nice contacts. But find the point where to stop with this and get serious contacts with whom you interact ---> See point #1

6. Try to get your shots on Explore :) (Somehow this only happens by accident every now and then)

7.Don’t be rude because you think you are cool! In germany we have a saying:” Grüße die Menschen auf deinem Weg nach oben, denn wenn es für dich mal nach unten geht, wirst du ihnen wieder begegnen!“ which means: Be nice to the people on your way to the top because when you fall down you will see them again“

8.Use Creative Commons to advertise your photos. In two or three years there will be tools to automatically detect who first released a photo. So why have fear that someone could steal your image. Professional companies don’t use your photos for commercials they fear lawsuits. Creative Commons works for your advertisement all over the world 24 hours without you being active.

9.Use other Media to get your photos around. For example Twitter, Tumblr, a blog… you know all of these platforms. Mostly you are able to automatically post your photos to all these Websites without doing any hand clap